I’ve been at this blogging thing for a while, and I keep forgetting that when you get new followers, sometimes they have a hard time finding a quick recap on what they’ve missed when you’ve got months and months of archives!
Welcome to my blog, folks, and here’s a little bit about me that you may find through reading old posts or my Twitter, but not what you’d find on my about page.
- I have an orange cat named Penny, and she thinks she’s the queen of the universe. I got her from Ken Cuccinelli. True story.
- I’m an INFJ.
- I’m the oldest of nine kids, and I was homeschooled K-12.
- I was born in California, moved to Virginia when I was 12 (we moved to join a cult), and I moved back to California last fall.
- I did the courtship thing and got married, but he ended things right before our second anniversary.
- Being an English major and my love of reading made me a feminist.
- I like to bake. And cook. And I like good company and good food. And coffee.
- I do a lot of things for fun and for work, but most of them involve books or art. I’m for hire as an editor, marketer, or development whiz kid.
- But what I really, really want to do is be a literary agent. Or just live in France and write novels.
- You can find me on Twitter and on Instagram! I like to talk about how much I love coffee and cheese sticks, and sometimes I tell stories about awkward social interactions. Most of the awkward may or may not be my fault. Usually I just yell at the patriarchy and link to things I find interesting.
Any other questions? What else do you want to know? I’m so happy you’re here and reading!
If you’re new or have been lurking for a while, I’d love to get to know you a bit better. Introduce yourself in the comments and tell me about your favorite book!
My name is Kathleen, and I found your blog recently through Love, joy Feminism. I am a long time Christian, though not from what anyone would call a Christian family. Mostly they are uninterested in religion, with the exception of my mom. My mother, who passed recently, was a bipolar alcoholic.
I homeschooled my son for two years after a serious sports accident, and it was a great experience for both of us. Being home gave him the time and space he needed – he was in physical therapy for a year. He wanted to go back to public school for high school, and is now in his first year of engineering school.
I am in my third year of a business teaching Comprehensive English classes to homeschool students. I’m also starting on a series of teaching guides for homeschooling parents to teach classic novels. So far my series has an introductory book, and one novel guide (cooking right along here.) Here my Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Kathleen-Schwab/e/B00D2KMLQG/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1394861301&sr=8-1
My favorite novel is Kristin Lavrensdatter by Sigrid Undset. It is the story of a woman in 14th century Norway, and deals with themes of the individual vs society, duty vs passion, and the conflict between Chritsianity (which was fairly new to Norway) and paganism.
That picture is not me – it got attached to my name somehow, and I need to get somebody to fix it.
I used to blog alot more – before my business took off and i ended up with so many students – on hubpages under the pen name Grace O’Malley: http://graceomalley.hubpages.com/
I’ve been enjoying your blog. Since I’ve started teaching homeschoolers I’ve been educating myself about the larger homeschooling world. Most of my students don’t come from strict fundamentalist homes, although some of the elements are there.
Awww … Penny is so cute. 🙂
My name is Kelsey. I’m from the greater Seattle area (beautiful, rainy, sometimes a bit moldy). I don’t have a specific favorite book; it’s more that I have a favorite book for a season.
One of my all-time favorites though are Passing by Nella Larsen. Passing is novel that’s set in the 1920’s and deals primarily with the theme of racial passing (passing for white). One of the main characters, Clare, who is black but very fair-skinned was raised by her white aunts and, therefore, was forced to “pass.” Later in life she marries a white, very racist man. And begins to wonder whether or not she wants to pass anymore. It deals with race, class, and gender all a little and is just a fabulous novel.
I also love Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life. Growing up my mom was (and still is) a traditionally published author, so I can relate with some of the stories at the beginning of growing up as a writer’s kid (only her dad wrote porn and my mom wrote cookbooks).
INTJ here 🙂 I continue to enjoy your blog quite a bit. Thank you for writing!
Hey, I’m Stacy. I am also an INFJ and I feel like we have very similar lives. I’ve attached a photo of my family; I’m the eldest of eleven. I grew up in South Dakota and I am just finishing up my bachelor’s degrees in English and Classical Studies in Philadelphia. I have been very enthusiastic about YA fiction since I was very young. My parents forbade me to read Harry Potter, so I read His Dark Materials and the Abhorsen trilogy instead. When I tell people in Philly about my childhood, they straight-up don’t believe me/don’t have any idea what it is like. If you’re up for it, I’d love to chat via email or Skype. I feel like it might be cathartic.
So I was trolling your archives, and ran across this. Normally I don’t comment on old posts, but then I noticed that no one had told you about their favorite books and that made me sad. Everyone needs more good books. I don’t really do one favorite, but here’s some stuff campaigning for the position.
The Road to Wigan Pier. Believe it or not, Orwell actually wrote much more than Animal Farm and 1984, and this is one of his best. Its the story of his time investigating conditions among the poor of northern England in the 1930s. The entire work is filled with his quiet rage against injustice, and conveyed in his simple clear sentences. This book is what made me fall in love with words. It’s what taught me how a style of writing can reinforce the message being conveyed.
The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C Clarke. All of Clarke’s stuff is good, but I particularly love his early short stories. Written in the 1930s and 40s, he simply didn’t understand what was not possible. Nowadays, we know that space travel is horrifically expensive, and that all manner of things aren’t practical; but back then it wasn’t clear. Consequently, there’s a freedom to his imagination that’s immensely enjoyable to read. “The Nine Billion Names of God” is probably my favorite of the set.
Black Hearts. This one is tough. By any objective measure, it’s probably just average, but it hits me because of who I am. In the middle of the Iraq War, a platoon of soldiers went crazy. By the time that the madness was over, a young girl had been raped, her family murdered, and two soldiers kidnapped. Black Hearts is the sadly true story of how this all was allowed to happen, how ordinary everyday Americans could do something completely despicable. It’s a tale of what happens when leadership cares about the wrong things, and doesn’t understand what life is like for people at the bottom. The thing is, I’m an officer in the Army, and it’s horrifyingly easy to see how I could make the same mistakes. Whether this book has the same impact for anyone else, I can’t say.
Anyway, that’s probably not much of an introduction, but hey, you asked for favorite books.
Hannah, I read your post on Cracked and I got chills just from the title. I was raised Associate Reformed Presbyterian, so I was locked in Calvinism vs Free Will debates in middle school, Kissed Dating Goodbye book discussions in high school, and went to a Christian college where I signed a pledge to spend my 18-22-year-old window not drinking, smoking, having sex, swearing, or you guessed it, dancing.
During college and the next few years, I slowly found my way out of my narrow way of thinking, thanks to exposure to so many amazing “non-Christians” who helped me realize that there is no us vs them unless we want there to be.
Unfortunately, my sisters’ have stayed in it, courted and married young, and have a quiverfull mentality about children. Much of what you said will be really helpful for when I talk to them, because I love them very much (and the bumper crop of nieces/nephews).
Thank you so much for writing about this subject – I loved your Cracked article, as well as Jori’s story. While I would no longer identify as a Christian, but there’s a still a lot I love about what I learned from Christianity: community, forgiveness, kindness, joy.
I became a stand-up comedian as a way of resolving my own depression and self-doubt, and found that the person on the other side had something to say. I called it A Stand Up Life, and sometimes I think, this is my church, my religion. One about being honest about, and laughing at, our pain, about inclusion instead of exclusion, about self-worth instead of self-loathing, and about the wisdom of admitting we don’t have all the answers (and some guys from a patriarchal society a long time ago didn’t either.)
Best to you Hannah. I look forward to reading more.